Gentrification is that brand new thing that once missed: once there was a place of happy poor people, forgotten by God, than arrived the artists and transformed it in a magical place to be lived by both artists and poor people, but later appear the restaurants and all the ones who desire have a lunch in the restaurants that have just murdered the magician of that place.
The high prices force the pour to escape, while all is restored in respect of a false conservative interventions, flashy, vulgar, nostalgic of something that only the original poor inhabitants, those who has been forced by hungriness and starvation to sell and move away, could feel.
*San Berillo is one of the old town districts of Catania, once it was exclusively populated by prostitutes and there were small shops of artisans. Lately it has been the subject of an “urban renewal” that hides (but not much indeed) economic interests above all the one linked to the urban speculation.
What is happening in this district has just happened to Vico Santa Filomena, where the old artisans – tailors and shoemakers – left place to cool restaurants for the exclusive pleasure of an elite of citizens and tourists.
 
the urban kit 
the question always remains–what happens to the poor among us? and, how can we better serve them? thanks for your post.
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This post is the very first and it’ll be followed by other which will face this question. Wait for the others. Thanks for your attention
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Great post:)
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Thank you
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Wonderful article. Very sad to read. Sadly, I feel like this sort of thing happens all over the place. It’s always spun as “beneficial”
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This is really very sad isn’t it? I loved being able to look around through your pictures.
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The down side of progress. 😔
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I love your pictures!
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You have a gift. Your writing raises important questions. Who will save mankind from itself? We need divine intervention, don’t we? Thank you for the “likes” by the way.
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What a post! Your words are as true as strong at the same time.
Thank you very much, Ela.
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Humans often tend to destroy the things they love.
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It’s a familiar story. I remember arguing about it once, back when I drove cab, with a passenger who was singing the praises of MInneapolis’s urban renewal. When I mentioned the people who’d been displaced, it took him aback. I swear, he’d never thought of them.
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People are often forgotten in the ‘larger scheme of things’… I am thinking of homelands flooded by dams and reservoirs and one particular picnic spot of my childhood, now gone.
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Interesting post as well as lovely photos, Ela.
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Catania, Catania… I had to refresh my memory. (Google maps) 😉
How could I forget? Ages and ages ago, we drove from Taormina to Syracuse. Belisimo.
Thank you for your words and images. Grazie mille.
Brian
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your pictures tell important stories. I think especially of China’s Three Gorges Dam which brought in apartments with refrigerators and washing machines, but displaced millions from their ancestral homes.
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It has happened in London, the character of an area and it’s people moved out to be replaced with posh Restaurants and coffee shops, so many coffee shops. Thank you your post so interesting.
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great thanks for sharing this.
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